


It Reminded Me Of You

by Sevent



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Witchers (The Witcher), Established Relationship, Fae Jaskier | Dandelion, Family Feels, Gift Giving, Happy Ending, M/M, Rumors, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:41:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28370319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sevent/pseuds/Sevent
Summary: Rumors and assumptions surround a witcher and a bard. The witcher is just trying to do his job, even during a time as peaceful as Yule. There's gift giving to do too, which means last minute shopping to go through. If only people would leave him out of their gossip.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 24
Kudos: 249
Collections: Geraskier Holiday Exchange 2020





	It Reminded Me Of You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stevie_RST](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stevie_RST/gifts).



> Happy Holidays to stevie_RST (iboughtaplant)! Here is my gift to you ♥

Dusk falls on the year’s last Yuletide eve. The encroaching darkness is met with lights every color of the rainbow. They wind over front porches and sidewalk trees, and hang off of street signs like morning frostbite, across every stretch of city road.

It’s a time of jolly cheer and family reunions, of gift giving and greeting the new year together with loved ones.

Not so for Geralt of Rivia, who is very much preoccupied with riding a forktail into a knickknack store. 

“Hey hey! Get out of the way!”

The two Redanian-flagged officers keeping the block safe for civilians dive out of the forktail’s path faster than it takes him to finish yelling. Smart of them not to wait, as the beast roars by loud enough to break glass and, without pause in its breakneck sprint, smashes through the unfortunate store’s window display.

Geralt ducks his head in time to miss most of the falling debris, rolling off the forktail’s back before it shakes him off with violence. The store is a tight spot, but not so much for him as it is for the beast. It can’t spread its wings as easily, or swing its poisonous tail at him. 

Taking his shot now that it’s stuck, the witcher throws a heavy bolas at its feet and watches it catch on one foot and wrap around the other twice. That the beast is not yet fully grown means it can’t break out of it with brute strength. It still has its sharp-fanged mouth, though. 

Right as the forktail gets the idea to use its chompers, Geralt jumps on its head to pin it to the ground with all his weight. Its jaws clench shut on impact. Annoyed, the forktail tries to shake him off, but with its wings crashing into every wooden panel around it, it fails to get up and break free. 

The thick rope hooked to the witcher’s belt is finally put to use—though not without more struggling. It’s a near thing, getting his hands under the beast’s maw to tie it shut and _not_ lose a finger. This would be so much easier if the contract was to _kill_ the forktail and not catch it. But well, that’s the job. A right complicated mess, always. 

“Come on! Just sit still,” Geralt grits out, waving his hand in the position for _Axii._ On a draconid, the sign is meagerly effective, but with the beast stunned and tiring, it gives him the few seconds he needs to finish the knot.

At the last safe tug of rope, Geralt collapses on his ass, over broken glass and a fistful of splinters. 

“Fuck,” he curses in relief.

And would you look at that from outside the display. The snow is just now starting to fall. 

The forktail hobbles up onto its wings but without any useful mobility, it sits back down and trills at him, like a hissy cat the size of a small bus. 

Geralt blows a heavy sigh. He pilfers his phone out from his jacket to dial the last call number.

_“Good evening. This is the Draconid Recovery Center. How may I help you?”_

“Yeah, _ugh,_ it’s me." Standing up with a groan, a couple of crushed shards fall off his butt. The fabric better not have any tears. Those are new pants, given to him by Ciri at Yuletide’s start. "I got the adolescent under control.”

_“Oh, thank the gods. Thank you, sir witcher. We were so worried the state would have to put Petunia down once she reached the city borders. It’s the holidays, we put the notice up, but we didn’t expect anyone to answer in time.”_

“Not a problem. A witcher never rests, even for Yule.”

That’s not exactly true, and his back for one is going to hate him tomorrow for not taking the day off, but it’s close enough to being true. Plenty of witchers don’t take the winter off, though most of them do.

 _“We’ll be sending a transport truck to your location,”_ the man on the other end reports, along with the rapid clacking of a keyboard heard through the call. _“Your contract payment should send in a couple minutes.”_

“Great.” 

Petunia, the aforementioned forktail, huffs hot, misty air onto his knees. 

“Be grateful," he chides her, "They’re making sure your species doesn’t go extinct in the next fifty years.”

_“Sir, Petunia is not intelligent enough to understand what you are saying.”_

Geralt rolls his eyes as he climbs around the forktail to get back out onto the street, phone held in front of his face like a walkie-talkie. “I know.”

Once outside, the two officers from before take a gander behind him at the tied-up, angry forktail. At their long stares, he looks back at the entrance, and finally assesses that it is absolutely _thrashed_ beyond repair. 

“One last thing,” he tells the recovery guy over the call. “You guys will cover the insurance, right?”

Snow falls heavier as the night goes on. Not so much that he can’t ride Roach out, but he’ll have to be careful if it keeps up.

Roach herself purrs warmly as he waits for the stoplight to change. She’s a fine motorbike. A little aged and weary, but beautifully cared for. Hasn’t failed him yet. She has an attitude of her own, but Geralt wouldn’t want her any other way.

The light takes forever to change, so he checks the Postings app for other contract offers in the area. It’s right as he’s reading one about a graveyard ghoul clean-up a couple miles out of the city that a text covers the upper portion of his screen.

It’s from Jaskier.

> J(musical note symbol):  
>  I know youre checking for more jobs, even tho youve already done what? 3 in the past day?

He stares long enough for the text to fade up. Another replaces it.

> J(musical note symbol):  
>  come on. its yuletime

The light changes to green. He puts his phone back in his jacket pocket. A new message pings but he doesn’t check what it says as he takes the exit into the highway. Jaskier would understand.

“Heard your bard’s got a new beau.”

Geralt stops double checking his purchase bag to look back at the store clerk.

“What?”

He’s at an open and working knickknack store, one of the many that exist in Novigrad City’s Gildorf Mall. The reason he picked this place over the others was because it had less traffic inside, and a bit of last minute gift shopping for his brothers and friends requires peace and quiet. He was just about done when the clerk—who must be familiar with his face by the many paparazzi pictures he’s accidentally starred in—caught his attention with his strange choice of words.

The clerk explains, “Got another witcher at his back now. The guy held an arm out while the bard signed autographs down at his brand deal store. Least that’s what I heard.” The sniff between pauses is a little awkward. “You two split ways?”

Geralt doesn’t bother with an answer. He takes his bag and walks out the sensor door, immediately covering his eyes at the wall of fluorescent ads. 

If the city is one bright and shining beacon, the mall is an indoor sun. 

It’s annoying to traverse, but as he’s the one who left gift shopping for the last second, he has no one to blame but himself. At least it’s warm inside the mall. And no one really stops to point fingers at him the way they’d do in the Bits’ Marketplace. They just gasp, whispering _‘White Wolf’_ to each other with a little shy awe in their voices. Goes to show having friends in high places puts him in a high place by proxy. 

But he doesn’t want to ride the shoulders of other people’s fame. He’s just a simple witcher, with simple tastes and even simpler needs. He goes to familiar shops and steers clear of the shopping crowds and their gossiping lips.

There’s a lot of the latter going on.

He makes a stop at the mall’s sole antique shop, for some gifts he knows Vesemir will appreciate. His trip to Kaer Morhen will yet take another week, but it’d be more efficient to get through all the shopping in one go. 

The shop clerk at the counter greets him with as much curiosity as the previous. And he’s not the last one to do so either.

“Ah, didn’t bring Jaskier this time?”

“Haven’t heard of you two since the last incident with a dragon up north.”

“Did you really break up with Jaskier, or is that just an exaggerated magazine headliner?”

One exhausting thing about having friends in high places is everyone takes you for a news outlet. As if he cares to tell anything to anyone who doesn’t have any business knowing him. 

At the pawn shop, his last stop, he haggles for a good price on the harpy feathers he managed to pluck off yesterday morning. They’re a rare golden color. The harpies themselves were ushered away to safer nesting grounds. 

Then the pawnbroker puts the feathers aside, instead of getting the payment over with.

“You’re one of my most loyal regulars,” he says, “So I feel like I should warn you.”

Geralt looks up impassively from the counter.

“Don’t trust any of the fae. You know those folk put their interests first, and you never know _what_ those interests are. You’d do good not to speak to that fae bard again.”

Instead of replying, he takes the bit of cash added to the original agreed price. “Thanks for the tip,” Geralt says, putting away his wallet.

On the way down the escalator, his phone buzzes from a new text. 

> J(musical note symbol):  
>  when you finally pull your head out of your arse, I'll be at the Chameleon

The Chameleon tavern bar is one of the city’s best known fae hubs. Early in his career, Jaskier used to tell him how it would one day be his. His dream tavern, where he’d play every night as the star of the stage. After the bard made a name for himself across the Continent, someone, apparently—whoever was the previous owner—gave it to him as a gift.

Rumor says he swindled it with favors from the fae. Another version embellishes with magic charms and two strumpet twins rewriting the owner's will.

Geralt doesn’t actually know the story. He just wants a drink.

Jaskier is there at the bar to greet him.

It's difficult to mistake him for anyone else. He’s the only person wearing a sequin shirt, the color of ocean waves. It falls open around his neck, which really comes as no surprise. His trousers, meanwhile, are whiter than chalk and ridiculously high, tight around his waist like second skin. Yellow powder colors his eyelids, the same shade as his painted nails.

He’s dressed like a summer day on the beach, like a memory of warmth in midwinter. 

“So you came after all,” the bard rings across the counter, a bubbly drink dangling from his right hand. His smile, an unmatchable ray of light, quickly falls to a dramatic pout that to anyone else, might look genuine. “I was beginning to think you got tired of my pretty face.” 

Without a second’s pause, Geralt gives him a kiss, something more than just a greeting or a quick, forgettable thing. 

The group of fae gathered to their right politely turn their conversation away. They’re not privy to anyone’s business but their own, not like the cityfolk that have been drilling their judgment on and on in his ear all night. 

Upon parting, and with his tender hand finding a home on Jaskier’s back, Geralt casually inquires, “Did you know we broke up?” 

Jaskier blinks. His misty, blue eyes clear a bit from their daze. “We did? Oh, new rumors running around?” The eye roll he follows that with is outrageous, it hurts Geralt’s own eyeballs just to see them. “People will believe what they want to believe. I’ve heard it said that I’ve no actual talent for music.” His occupied hand does a little shake dangerous to its contents, though not a drop spills from the glass. “That I just bewitch my listeners with fae magic. Them _and_ my lovers too.” 

“You and I know you can’t trick me with your magic. Anyway, forget that. Here.” 

From his pocket, Geralt pulls a little box. Jaskier immediately puts his drink down and claps at the offering. 

“Saw it and thought of you,” he adds, hand circling Jaskier’s abandoned glass for a sip. Appearances can be deceiving, and he knows for a fact Jaskier likes his drinks hard, just effervescent and a little on the sweet side.

“You thought of me? What is it?”

“Open it then, it’s past midnight, right?”

Jaskier hums in the affirmative, and so he makes quick work of opening the box, uncaring that they could first find a private place as the tavern’s owner. Everyone else is having their own good time, anyway. 

Inside the box is a little band of gold with a flowery design engraved around it. A buttercup, Jaskier’s favorite flower. 

“Oh, I adore it,” he breathes with a touch of wonder, taken by the way the design shines in the light. The petals appear and disappear as he turns the band this way and that. At the end of his inspection, Jaskier fixes it on his middle finger, the only one in that hand to be naked of jewelry, but now no more. “Thank you, darling. Is that why you were taking more jobs these past few days? You shouldn’t have.”

The shrug Geralt gives is answer enough. Jaskier reads him so well, which makes things both easier and harder for him to work around—easier, of course, because it takes a few moments being around him to know his thoughts. And harder because, well. Difficult to surprise someone when they _know_ you’re hiding a surprise.

“Sorry I didn’t text you back.” Geralt scratches the back of his head, embarrassed. “I didn’t want to give away what was up.”

For a second, a frown replaces Jaskier’s lovely smile, and he fears that he pushed the cold shoulder a little too hard. They’ve talked about not bottling things up and keeping things from each other, not anymore. But the frown fades with a sigh, more like a laugh than actual frustration. 

“Had the gift planned out, didn’t you? Well, good thing I’ve something for you too.” 

“Hm?” 

Jaskier’s returning smile takes on an impish twist. “But, you’ll have to wait until after, if you’ll come home with me?” 

“You mean after I _drive_ you home, carpooling freeloader,” Geralt mutters into their shared drink, once he’s sure that Jaskier is honestly alright that he kept a secret just this once, for a surprise.

“Hey, I pay for the gas! And road snacks! And Roach’s next oil change—”

“Yeah yeah. When’s the fae party end?”

It turns out, some vague hour before sunrise. It is the eleventh Yuletide eve which, for a lot of the fae folk gathered in the Chameleon, means one last grand feast before departing for ‘home’—wherever that may be—on the last day of Yule. 

Jaskier, one of their most celebrated of kin, won’t be coming with them, so in addition to food and drink, there’s basketfuls of strange fruits and a few magic words said, wishing him health and safety in the year to come. Jaskier himself never learned to charm or spell so their words are heartily appreciated. He just knows how to sing and dance, and keep a harmless human guise up in front of other folk not of his kind. Everyone still knows he’s fae. For a lot of people, that’s enough to hold awful assumptions about him. But for many others, he’s just a weird, funny man of fame who hangs around witchers and witches.

Geralt wouldn’t have him and his ridiculous, shimmering sequins any other way.

The snow lets up sometime during the night, and everyone takes that as a sign to depart. A swirling portal opens in the Chameleon’s grand stage for all the fae guests, congratulatory farewells on everyone’s lips. The gifts in Jaskier's name, meanwhile, get sent up to Jaskier’s personal suite. They’ll be safe at the Chameleon, the bard says, and Geralt believes him. Not just because of all the fae magic infused into the building, but because only an idiot would break into a building popular _with_ fae. 

Geralt watches the hubbub from the far wall, arms crossed and one eyebrow raised at the few pieces of information he catches. As humans do not trust fae, neither do fae trust witchers, and they have plenty of opinions to share secretively for Jaskier’s good. Witchers hunt monsters and non-humans, after all. It just takes a contract and a big enough reward, and they’ll turn on even their loved ones.

Jaskier hums and nods, and leads them through the portal, thanking them each for a wonderful Yule. Once the crowd is gone, and all who are left are the bar staff and the two of them, they head outside to fetch Roach.

“They mean well, I know,” Jaskier murmurs as he straps on Geralt’s extra helmet. “I just know better than they do.”

“Yeah,” Geralt says back, simply. Roach rumbles for a hot second under him, her engine roaring to life. “Hold on.”

The drive to Jaskier’s place—a penthouse high above the city, a little bit downtown of the Oxenfurt Uni district—takes less than a half hour. 

The penthouse suite leans towards the luxurious, with a wide open entrance, two kitchens and three guest rooms. It even has a private ceiling pool. Too cold to dip in now, even though the jacuzzi pocket to one side makes up for it. 

“Just one second!” Jaskier tells him running off to his bedroom. He leaves Geralt scratching his head to guess if he should take off his shoes to avoid trekking sludge on the nice flooring. Whenever he visits Yen’s nice place, she sighs for all the dirt and specks of blood he accidentally leaves over the furniture. “And you definitely should leave your boots and your jacket at the entrance!” he hears yelled from deeper inside.

Well, that answers that.

Geralt does as commanded, parting with his snow-wet jacket and his heavy cleated boots, and with a quick swipe of his butt that he swears loosens a piece of broken glass, he takes a careful seat on the living room's lone couch.

There, he waits.

Such a big, breathable place, he thinks, looking around the suite, but hardly any of it feels lived in. It’s true that they usually meet at Geralt’s monthly rent pick, share a night or two, and afterwards, go their separate ways till the next time life allows them respite. It confuses him more now. Why Jaskier would want to spend a second in a cramped bed, when he has the music deals and brand money to sleep in his own king-sized bed. 

But Jaskier has always been a lost golden retriever sort of soul, following where he’s wanted more than closing himself in a warm but lonely pen. He uses his money to buy the comforts his friends need, more times than he uses it on the things he wants for himself.

It’s strange how they could have ever gravitated towards each other, because the witcher is quite the opposite in many ways. He likes his solitude, his moments of meditation. He doesn’t care where he ends up at the end of the day, so long as there’s hot water to shower with. It’s hard for him to accept gifts from others, but with Jaskier’s open pockets, it’s gotten less embarrassing.

Ciri once told him in all her childlike wisdom that it’s their differences what make them alike. “Like puzzle slots,” she called it. “You have to find the right gaps and put them in the right places. People can be like that.”

He has a lot of people he’s found over the years that fit the gaps of his puzzle. Vesemir, to remind him of the important things. Lambert, for the stupid things. Eskel, Coen, Ciri, for the many other things in between that help him keep his head level and his heart warm. Yen too is her own piece, one that learned to fit beside Ciri’s with the weathering of time.

So it makes no sense, and at the same time _perfect_ sense, that someone like Jaskier could hold a puzzle piece the size of his heart in the palm of his hand.

It takes another minute for Jaskier to come back out, still wearing his ridiculous blue sequin shirt, and carrying a long box under his armpit. His ears have grown to their fae length and from his smile gleam sharp teeth, his simple glamor put to rest in the comfort of a home.

“I know you appreciate utilitarian gifts,” Jaskier stays, offering the box. “I’m the trinket person between us. So I got you something I know you’ll put to good use.” 

Geralt takes the gift, eyeing the big red bow on the lid with an amused quirk to his raised brow. The gift is easy enough to pry open and peek inside.

It’s a hunting knife. 

“You said your knife broke at the handle a couple months back,” Jaskier goes on to explain with a nervous flutter of his hands, as the witcher takes the knife out of its box with a slow, careful grip. “And, um, I know you haven't bothered to get a new one since you have a utility knife that could do the job at least half way right. So I recruited Lambert’s help in picking one for you! It’s serrated and everything. The handle ends on a wolf head, thought it was somewhat to your theme—"

“Thank you,” Geralt croaks, immediately fitting the knife to the sheath he keeps strapped to his hip. The knife fits perfectly in the slot. Trust a witcher to pick the right blade size. He'll have to thank Lambert too, when he gives him his gift.

Jaskier’s smile beams through his blue eyes. “You’re very welcome, my dear.” In the next instant, he dashes behind the couch for the TV remote and blips it on. “Now that we've done our exchanging of gifts, can we watch some late night movies and make fun of their awfully predictable yuletide plots? Whoever guesses right the most gets to sleep in tomorrow.” 

Geralt grabs the throw blanket over the couch’s middle and tosses it over them both, once the bard settles in beside him. “You’re on.” 

Halfway into the second movie, they draw the couch’s footrest up and forget the contest to cozy up under the throw. Jaskier is halfway through eating the popcorn that was made in the credits of the last movie already. Geralt’s eaten a total of two popped kernels. 

For some reason, he can’t stop grinning. It’s Yule and Jaskier is eating all the popcorn, and he’s grinning.

Oh, his back is going to complain like a devil for all the witchering work he did, but the wink of the buttercup ring and the happy hum in Jaskier's chest tell him it was well worth it.


End file.
